


Rescue Me

by kuro49



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik is a firefighter and Charles' house is on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue Me

**Author's Note:**

> Heck, I don't even watch the firefighting drama this fic's title is named after. (Originally posted at ff.n but completely forgotten until now.)

Charles Xavier has never lived on his own.

And for good reasons too.

His father has been a great nuclear scientist, working on top-secret experiments in some laboratory set up within official government buildings. He is rarely home but Charles doesn't mind, it just makes their time together extra special.

His mother has loved him a great deal also. Although, she is always just a little out of reach for him with those expensive red dresses and large pearl necklaces he can't put a finger on. Still, young Charles knows she loves him very much.

But he lives in a large mansion in the New York countryside and has tutors come in from the city to teach him lessons far beyond his years. There are always maids by the door and a chef in the kitchen.

He never needs to provide for himself.

Neither has he ever needed to live for himself.

(Yes, one can call him sheltered and another will call him spoiled. Charles Xavier isn't one to deny the obvious, he is all of those things and more, so _much_ more.)

Until his father dies, and his mother remarries a man Charles blames for his father's death, everything turns into a chemical explosion and nothing is left.

Well, maybe except for him.

000

It has been three months since he has graduated from school. And living from hotel to hotel and then crashing nights at a friend of a friend's place, he has finally found a home for himself.

But the sharp and shrill alarm piercing his ears might be a problem.

Charles is standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring.

Blue eyes widening as they see a pan and fire, like bright red flames that is burning up everything.

His eyes are a little teary, the air is a little smoky and he feels just a little faint already. But Charles is bred as an academic, hence the textbooks and papers still lying across the ground, not a survivor in any sense of the word.

Fumbling with the phone in his hand, he scrambles to remember the emergency number, the three-digit one that people are supposed to know in case of anything. Only to hear a flat dialling tone before remembering he has yet to register with a local phone company.

Charles swears inwardly, standing before a burning stove and it really does take a while before he remembers he owns a cell phone of all things. (Oh, the miracles of life itself.)

He enters the living room because that's the last place he remembers it to be. And although his memory has always been the only thing he can rely on, a little bit of panic slowly sets in.

But he does feel a little safer when he finally hits the call button, even though his kitchen may still be on fire.

"Hello, 911 emergency?"

"Uhh… my house is on fire."

It is a woman who picks up his call, she sounds like dry ice and Charles imagines her to be blonde, and well endowed to say the least. He lets out an awkward cough, at both the smoke and his thoughts.

"Are you alright, sir?"

"Yeah," he chokes on the smoke, actually, this time. "But my house is on fire."

"Can you get to somewhere safe?"

Charles looks around, sees smoke and fire and the doorway leading out of his living room.

"No."

He doesn't need to think, it is an automatic response, or so he has convinced himself. (It is all those chemical fires that have consumed his life before this, maybe it's time to start anew again.)

"Can you give me your location?"

"Ummm… well, you see," Charles takes a seat in an armchair in the corner of the room. "I just moved in here two days ago, I don't really know the street name or anything… say, can't you like GPS me or something?"

"Stay on the line sir, I'm working on that right now."

"…"

"…"

The silence doesn't unnerve him, rather, it soothes him, because it is like a connection no one else can make. He watches the smoke curl in from the kitchen and remembers the fried eggs he never got the chance to taste.

"…"

"Help is on the way, sir. By the way, you live on…"

But he is no longer listening, he is back at the study where a chess set lies between him and his father.

000

He doesn't know why he doesn't run, or at the very least, walk out of his apartment.

Even though there is a clutter of opened boxes filling the hallways, he is sure he can manage but Charles is sitting in his living room when someone in full-gear is barging through his front door.

There is smoke everywhere and he is curled up in an armchair a friend from college doesn't want, holding on to a cushion Raven has bought him last time she visited.

It doesn't take a valid mind, just one with common sense and the basic knowledge that if you stay in a burning building, you will ultimately die.

Charles glances at the doorway and waves, like a well-mannered child who can't take care of himself (and perhaps, in every sense of the word, he is still that same child who is not allowed to touch his mother's jewellery.)

"The name is Charles, Charles Xavier. Thanks for coming."

He coughs on the smoke as he stands up from the seat and it is probably the amount of carbon dioxide he has inhaled but his knees give out beneath him and he falls to the floor.

Only, there is none of that catch-me-as-I-fall.

"Ow."

His shoulder hits the rough carpets.

But there is still all of the pick-me-up-when-I-fall.

He wraps his arms around the firefighter who is gathering him up from the floor and the smoke has thickened considerably, Charles notices. Tightening his grip on the man that is holding him to his chest, he keeps talking like it is the only thing keeping him going.

It is the fire, he blames, that is setting him up for embarrassment rather.

"I would offer you tea… if my kitchen wasn't on fire…"

He doesn't know if the man can hear him through all that protective gear he is wearing but it's not like Charles really cares at this point.

"Or if I hadn't burned my kettle last night, _sir_."

He remembers dry ice and a woman's voice.

000

In less than refined terms, this house is the epitome of dry twigs.

There are cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other. Opened textbooks are sprawled across the floors, there are loose leaflets of papers left out on tables and every other available surfaces. Even the chess set at the corner of the room is made of wood.

In Erik Lehnsherr's eyes, this place deserves to be burnt to ashes, along with everything else. So yes, when asked, Erik will admit that he nearly throws the man in his arms right back into the fire.

Hence, he is more than surprised when the same man jogs up to him, from ambulance to fire truck, just to thank a man who had almost given in to murder or at least assisted suicide.

"Sorry for causing all this trouble."

He sounds like the same man from the fire but his eyes are startlingly blue and alive. There isn't a hint of the man, set immobile by himself, when he glances around at the fire truck, the ambulance and a dozen residents from his apartment complex.

Erik furrows his brows.

"You look like I shouldn't be apologizing to you."

And he may be coming off rude or disinterested but the other only seem to know how to smile sheepishly. Erik shakes his head and replies, flat and dead. "No, you shouldn't. You should be apologizing to everyone else."

He motions to their surroundings but neither breaks the eye contact they have held since Charles (yes, he remembers his name, it is the introductions in flaming homes that sticks) has first initiated this conversation.

"Still," he makes this much more than fact and words, "you saved me."

Erik narrows his eyes at the way Charles speaks: You saved me (even when you could've killed me.) He shifts the helmet in his hands and states, crossing the line between whatever they are and whatever they were.

"…You could've saved yourself."

He only replies because he is the first person to witness the sight of Charles, sitting alone in an armchair, hands in his lap, like a child waiting for his parents to come home.

"Maybe..."

Charles is smiling and something seems to shift.

"—Erik! Let's go!"

He snaps his head back at the sudden call of his name, co-workers aside, he has let this go too far. He needs control and focus, not surprises or, _him_.

"Sorry to keep you," his eyes crinkle into crescent moons and nothing is unpleasant at all. "I will find a way to thank you properly."

"No need," he takes a step back from the man in the dark blue cardigan and knows he can't start seeing him as someone more than another victim he has saved from a fiery death. "I was just doing my job."

He forces the words from his lips and it tastes much harsher. Even though they can meet in another time or a whole other spectrum of life, Erik knows, he will save him in return.

"And I am just doing mine's, a cup of coffee at a later time then?"

"I think," he sees Charles wait on his words but it is the way he calls Charles _Charles_ in his head that makes him give ways. Some things are better left unsaid. "You would prefer a cup of tea."

His smile blossoms into something more, something even the extent of fires don't reach.

"It's like you are reading my mind, Erik."

XXX Kuro


End file.
